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Translation, biopolitics and colonial Difference
Jon Solomon, Naoki Sakai
To cite this version:
Jon Solomon, Naoki Sakai. Translation, biopolitics and colonial Difference. Toward a global au- tonomous university, cognitive labor, the production of knowledge, and exodus from the education factory, Autonomedia, pp.136-143, 2009. �halshs-00919841�
Translation, Biopoliticsand Colonial difference
Naoki Sakai and Jon Solomon
The primary imperative given to subjective formation under the post-Fordist regime of immaterial labor is, as Maurizio Lazzarato and ToniNegri observed nearly two decades ago, communication. An i pe ati ethat ight see like a o e t of ope i g tu s i fa t i to just the opposite: The post- Fo dist su je t, ites Lazza ato, is a si ple ela of odifi atio a d de odifi atio , hose transmitted essage ust e lea a d ithout a iguit , ithi a o te t of o u i atio that has ee o pletel o alized. I the o te t of the e glo al e o o a d its migratoryregimes, subjects of communication face the especially daunting task ofaccounting for enormous differences and diversities throughout and acrossglobal populations. Hence, if communication is to be effective, it requires anideology of anthropological difference according to which the normalizationof diverse populations can be universally instituted. Needless to say, in the eraof post-colonial governance, such normalization would encounter impossibleresistance were it to proceed according to a model of uniformity that would inevitablyhighlight the uneven relations between center and periphery. What isneeded, rather, is a strategy of normalization that accounts for and includesdifference, yet organizes it according to predictable codes. Amidst the litany ofvarious biologico-sociological classificatory schemes that have arisen — oftenwith disastrous political consequences — since the 19th century, none is morepervasive, historically persistent and o side ed to e politi all eut al tha that of ultu e. Cultu e p o ides o u i atio ith the crucial classificatoryframework necessary both to preserve difference at a level acceptable topost- colonial governance and to ensure sufficient regularity in codification.According to this
ep ese tatio al s he e, t a slatio a es the p o ess ofe odi g/de odi g e ui ed to t a sfe informational content between differentlinguistico-cultural spheres. Just as the post-Fordist subject ust o u i ate, the atu e of o u i atio itself is st i tl odified a o di gto a g a a of pronominal identities and representational positions that codifieslinguistic exchange according to an essentially predetermined representationalscheme of mutually determined anthropological codes.
I o te po a pa la e, ultu al t a slatio a es the oste si l ethi al elatio to the othe founded on mutual respect for difference. Given themassive effects of lingering colonial difference, a o di g to hi h theWest is supposed to e e ise a do i ati g ediatio upo ultu al ep ese tatio sa oss the glo e, ultu al t a slatio u dou tedl o stitutes a i efutably progressive development in the recognition of previously colonizedpeoples. Yet as Boris Buden poi ts out i his defe se of st ategi esse tialis , the otio of t a slatio utilized toda s proponents of culturaltranslation is not the conventional, modernist one that emphasizes semanticidentity and hierarchies of translatability and untranslatability, but rather apostmodernist one sensitive to the problems of indeterminacy and differenceraised by the philosophies of difference.
In 2006, we published a issue of the ultili gual se ies T a es titled T a slatio , Biopoliti s, Colo ial Diffe e e i hi h e p ese ted a a gu e tfo a ti ulati g the i dete i a of translation as a modality of socialpractice to the contingent commodifications of labor-power and the nexus ofknowledge that governs anthropological difference. The call for papers for thatissue
proposed to prospective authors the idea of bringing translation squarelyinto a politically informed discussion about the production of both social relationsand humanistic knowledge in the context of anthropological difference inheritedfrom colonialism. We did not hide our ambition to push the idea of ultu al t a slatio e o d st ategi esse tialis to p ese t a e isio ofs eti k o ledge and social practice that would directly subvert the anthropo-te h ologi al status of the West as both exception and a form of immunity.Central to this discussion was the notion of a biopolitics of translation.In a series of lectures in the late 1970s, Michel Foucault introduced and elaboratedthe asso ted o epts of iopoliti s a d go e e talit as tools fo thi ki g a out the a i hi h the processes of life — and the possibility ofcontrolling and modifying them through the technical means — enter thesphe e of po e a d e o e its hief o e . Fou ault s effo t has generallybeen understood as an innovative attempt to introduce a new ontology, beginningwith the body, that would provide a way of thinking the political subjectoutside the dominant tradition of ode politi al philosoph that f a es it asa su je t of la . Biopoliti s thus a es a uotidian sphere of ostensibly apolitical (or depoliticized) social action and relations — what Foucault calls thee t of life i to histo — that is nevertheless invested with crucial effectsfor the production of social subjects. These effects, far removed from the roletraditionally ascribed to politics per se, nevertheless bear directly upon the constructionof what is at stake in the formation of power relations.
I o de to use tools f o Fou ault s o eptual kit, ho e e , e fou dit as ot o l possi le ut also necessary to subject the latent and pervasiveOccidentalism in his work to a thorough critique while at the same time openingup possibilities for an understanding of biopolitics in a global o te t.The otio of a iopoliti s of t a slatio a ui es o eptual alidit a d iti al importance with a view to the specifically modern — which is to say,global — phenomenon of the linguistic standardization associated with nationalizationand colonial land appropriation. Ever since the concomitantbirth of philology and biology, modernity has been associated with the adventof a glo al a tog aphi i agi a that pla es peoples ith o p io e o of igratory contact, or o l deep e o su h as et olog , i to elatio th ough the ediatio of a i pe ial e te . As the transition to aglobal form of spatial imaginary, modernity begins, linguistically speaking,when the project of standardization is extended across all manner of socialdifferences to encompass diverse populations in the process of national homogenization(which occurs, as Jacques Bidet argues, on the le el of o lds ste a d do esti seg e tatio hi h o u s o the le el of lass difference or structure). This process must be seen, in turn, in the context ofcontact with other global populations undergoing the same traumatic processof systemic definition and structural segmentation. The biopolitics of translationthus names that space of exchange and accumulation in which politicsappears to have been preempted by the everyday occurrence of language.Our research shows that he t a slatio is u de stood a o di g to a ep ese tatio als he e of the episte ti subject, it names not the operatio hi h ultu al diffe e e is idged, ut athe the preemptive operationthrough which originary difference — what is encountered when translationis understood as an act of social practice — is segmented and organized accordingto the various classificatory schemes of biologico-sociologicalknowledge emerging out of the colonial encounter.
“ee f o this pe spe ti e, the ode egi e of t a slatio is a o etefo of s ste i o pli it hose p i a fu tio is populatio a age e t ithi the purview of imperial domination. In other words, it is a globallyapplicabletechnique of segmentation aimed at managing so ial elatio ships fo i g the to pass th ough i uits o the s ste i le el. I ou esea ho
the transnational discursive structure of both Japanese studies and the institutionof the Japanese Emperor system, or again in the relation between imperial nationalism and the maintenance of ethnic minorities, we were persuadedthat the geography of national sovereignty and civilizational difference that constitutesthe geocultural and geopolitical map of both the world and the humansciences indicates an important kind of subjective technology or governmentaltechnique that has, until recently, been thoroughly naturalized by an anthropologicaldis ou se of ultu e. It is o l today that we can begin to see how amultiplicity of disciplinary arrangements forming an economy of t a slatio i pla e si e the olo ial e a ut fa outli i g olo ialis s de ise a tuall p odu es differentially coded subjects, typically national/racial ones, whoseconstitution is interdependent and, at specific intervals, actually complicit in asingle, yet extremely hierarchical, state of domination. Our ai as thus tot a e a se ies of ge ealogies ithi hi h t a slatio is o lo ge see assi pl a operation of transfer, relay, and equivalency, but rather assumes avital historical role in the constitution of the social.
Our research into the position of the translator within the modern regimeof co-figured, nationalized language, shows a precise parallel to the logic ofsovereignty. Just as Giorgio Agamben has shown how sovereignty is based onthe form of exception (embodied by the figure of the sovereign), the positionof the translator in the modern era has been represented in a similarly exceptionalfashion.
Ou o k has tu ed this elatio ship i side out, de o st ati gthat the egula it of the atio al la guage as a fo atio i hi h the h id positio of the t a slato has ee dee ed i ele a t is in fact producedin a representational manner only after the practical encounter of social differencein translation. By proposing to look at the formation of national languagethrough the ostensibly exceptional case of translation, we have beenable to show that it is indeed a systemic, or international, technique of domination.This discovery parallels the growing awareness, largely advanced byYannMoulierBoutang, of the crucial role in capitalist expansion played bythe various forms of irregular and slave labor, rather than the regularized formsof wage labor. Hence, at the back of the call for papers for that issue was aproposal to displace the state of domination managed by the dual normalizingtechnologies of wage labor and nationalized speaking subjects with the inventivesubjectivities seen in the exodus from wage labor and national language.In effect, translation appears to us as the social relation from which thecritique of communication and its o olla ultu e as the eig i g ideolog of apital is ost di e tl linked to a politics of life, or again, the politics inwhich life becomes invested by capital.
In the various exceptions that alternately govern labor, life and language,we begin to grasp the way i hi h the West has esta lished a d ai tai edits ide tit as a spe te fo the last fe centuries as the leading, knowledgeableregion of the globe that supposedly exports innovation and developmentto other regions. Yet the very concept of the global, according to which regionsas such are imagined is intrinsically indebted to the legacy of colonialism. Althoughthe colonial encounter p odu ed the fi st t ul glo al elatio , theWest ide tified itself as a pa ti ula a d u i ue egio only by claiming exemptivesubtraction from this relation while at the same time undertaking unprecedentedaccumulation through originary expropriation.
The contemporary configuration of the West and the Rest along an immunitarianmodel is but the most recent development in this remarkablydurable history. As the contemporary West prepares to innoculate itself againsta slew of viral threats supposedly emanating from the Third World, it is wellworth remembering that for the indigenous, pre-Colu ia populatio s of the Ne Wo ld, the
contact with Europeans brought far more death from diseasethan any other cause. It took nearly 400 years, we are told, for population levelsin North and South America to reach pre-Columbian levels.
This decimationof pre-Columbian populations by viral disease, often occurring in advanceof actual contact with Conquistadors and European colonists, constitutes anemblematic event of modernity:
here, we find the original form of immunitariandistance that disavows the destructive, expropriative relationship whilesubsequently preserving the account of that history in the codes of anthropologicaldifference. The temporal inversion effected by the representation ofthis event is hat autho izes the West to lai its sa e a d i ilizi g issio a d ep ess its i al, a a i history.
The presentation to the Multitudes list of our call for a biopolitics of translationrequires more ela o atio tha e a p o ide he e, ut e ould like i i all to add ess t o poi ts: 1 If o- figu atio a es the st u tu e ofthe o ld i as u h as a th opologi al diffe e e is go e ed the epistemologicalrepresentation of translation (at the expense of the practical subject),then it could be politically-pertinent to see something like a Europeanreception of this project. Vis-à-vis the global networks of bipolarity establishedby the United States (which remains dominant in Asia), Europe stands in ahighly ambivalent position. Undoubtedly some Europeans will dream of makingthis ause fo a e Eu opea e eptio . But at the sa e ti e, this ift i E pi e, to o o B ia Hol es s suggesti e phrase, also presents us with aninteresting possibility to displace the bipolarity.
2) Concomitant with this creativepotential, we cannot overemphasize the necessity of a long-term, farreachingcritique, via the conceptual framework of translation, of theEurocentrism and Occidentalism that still pervades the Human Sciences today.Previous critiques of Occidentalism have focused on themes such as colonialambivalency and the reversal of established hierarchies, yet tend to leave thebasic structure of anthropological difference intact inasmuch as it is linguistically- encoded in the complex and mobile relations between major and minor languages; by contrast, a project in the biopolitics of translation brings to thecritique of the West both an epistemological critique of the anthropologicalbasis of knowledge and a practical engagement with the contemporary socialformation at the level of expression. Just as the Marxian critique of the commodityfetish proposed to remind us that the fruits of labor, now reified, actuallybear within them the trace of a social relation (and hence the possibility ofcreative transformation), we advance the thesis that translation can also be understoodas a form of social relation requiring similar critique of elements assumedto be extraneous to the production of meaning and bearing similarcreative potential. From the geneaological perspective of a biopolitics of translation,the emphasis is on, as Negri and Hardt propose of the multitude, notwhat we are but rather what we can become.
Crucial to that potentiality in the post-Fo dist e a is hat Fou ault ould all the ole of the spe ifi i telle tual. If a th opologi al diffe e e odedas t a slatio u de stood, o e agai , a o di g to an epistemico-representationalscheme rather than as a modality of social practice) is the reigningideology of the post-Fordist imperative to communicate, one must pay particularattention to the way the subject of knowledge, formed in the crucible ofdisciplinary and linguistic codifications still indebted to the legacy of colonialdifference, is particularly prone to communicate according to a restricted economyof ressentiment. This is not so much a problem of colonial psychology inthe Fanonian sense, but rather a more generally encompassing economy ofsubjective formation distinguished by the structure of return and the contradictionsthat riddle the search for recognition by minorities.
Undoubtedly, the struggle for control over the representational tactics ofanthropological difference, as it plays out within and between disciplines aswell as within and between nationalized populations favors the production ofsubjects bound by the expression of ressentiment. Control over the codificationof this representational scheme invariably involves preemptively identifyingwith an exceptional position that is subsequently disavowed even whileactively promoting its creation through disciplinary institutions. It is withinthis historical context that we can fruitfully expand upon Lazza ato a dNeg i s se i al o se atio that the ole of the i telle tual toda e peutdoncêtreréduiteni à une function épistémologique et critique, ni à un engagementet à un t oig age de li atio : est au i eau de l age e e t olle tif e u ili te ie t a ot thus be reduced either to an epistemologicaland critical function, nor to an engagement with and witness to li e atio . Withi the iopoliti s of t a slatio , the o st u tio of olle ti eage o u s ea h time anew in what our research has called the mode of theheterolingual address: in this mode, as we ha e said efo e, ou a e al a s o f o ted, so to speak, ith fo eig e s i our enunciation when your attitude is that of the heterolingual address. Precisely because you wish to communicatewith her, him, or them, so the first, and perhaps most fundamental,determination of your addressee, is that of the o e ho ight ot o p ehe d ou la guage, that is, of the fo eig e .
We propose, in closing, to see in the biopolitics of translation the form of socialmovement that corresponds most specifically to the intellectual laborer oftoday — a practice of knowledge, in other o ds, as a so ial o e e t of pe a e tt a slatio to use ‘adaI eko i s illia tl su i t formulation ) devotedto producing the multitude of foreigners we can become. It is perhaps onlyfrom this perspective that one can still hope, in this era of globalized civil warand unresolved historical injustice, for forms of collective agency capable ofconstituting a decisive break with the political subject of ressentiment.
